Final Thoughts

As I mentioned briefly, I have been testing ASUSTOR NAS appliances since the very beginning. With that background, I have seen them expand and add new features with each new generation. With this new series, we see ADM 3.0 for the first time out of beta, and it's faster than it ever has been. As for the new appliances, our first taste is this AS6404T. On the outside, you really won't notice any large improvements as ASUSTOR has kind of finalized a design for their appliances. With that, you get a soft plastic bezel with both green and blue LEDs and drive activity indicators above each slot. Some models such as the 6404T do get an LCD panel and buttons to control.

On the inside, we have the introduction to the Apollo Lake J3455. This solution is a 14nm Goldmont based SoC operating at 1. 5GHz. This includes an HD500 graphics core featuring 12 EUs and a 750MHz core clock capable of 4K60p over HDMI 2.0.

Moving things forward, the ASUSTOR AS6404T performed quite well in our testing. For some of our tests, we had no comparison data as all our old NAS appliances were tested on the old test system, so there is no direct comparison. With that said, 2017 is shaping up to be an exciting year for budget NAS platforms.

In single client, the AS6404T excelled admirably taking the top spot in all playback tests across all arrays. As for file copy, it was average and peaked near 118 MB/s in read operations. Workloads saw this unit capable of 16000 IOPS in RAID 0 and 13000 IOPS in RAID 6. Above all, the 6404T excelled in database and workstation workloads, showing the highest IOPS with consistently low latency.

With ADM 3.0, ASUSTOR has focused on overhauling its user interface making it more consumer friendly with auto arrangement of icons based on display resolution. They have also taken a page from Apple and allowed stacked icons to create app groups. Resizable menu windows round out further updates to the interface. Overall, the feel of ADM hasn't changed - it is still easy to navigate and very responsive to input, and the new tweaks do enable increased productivity with desktop shortcuts to your most used items.

Product Summary Breakdown

Performance

85%

Quality

90%

Features

93%

Value

90%

Overall TweakTown Rating

90%

The Bottom Line: With the Intel Apollo Lake platform, the ASUSTOR AS6404T carries an incremental performance upgrade for current NAS users and it's a solid place to start for aspiring NAS owners.

PRICING: You can find the product discussed for sale below. The prices listed are valid at the time of writing, but can change at any time. Click the link below to see real-time pricing for the best deal:

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